Dissing cable news.
When I'm here in BC I never watch TV. But when I go home to see my family, I fall right back into my bad old TV habits -- which during a week like last, includes copious amounts of CNN.
When you don't ever watch cable news but just read savvy online political types complain about how awful it is, you develop low expectations. So I found myself actually surprised at how palatable CNN's Katrina coverage was -- how willing they were to challenge the authorities interviewed on their shows (they humiliated the hapless FEMA director asking him questions about the latest refugee reports he should have been able but couldn't answer); how (relatively) serious-minded and incredulous the anchors were; even the net's attempts at interactivity, asking the audience, for instance, to weigh in on the class ramifications of the rescue effort or having a civilian from inside the SuperDome give his (angry) views to Wolf Blizter for several minutes. I don't mean to suggest the coverage was good; but given the difficulty of running 24-hour news coverage, it wasn't awful either. Well, until Larry King Live at least.
Anyway, I read with interest Slate's Jack Shafer, giving a good overview of the problems with cable TV news. Everything he says is correct. But the problems seem to be more with the medium itself than with the execution (Geraldo Rivera aside, of course). Cable news shouldn't be anyone's sole source of information; at the very least it should compliment your local newspaper. But it's really there so that people can devote a little attention all day to whatever catastrophe is going on rather than a lot of attention for just a few minutes a day. It's sort of soothing that way, knowing we're always keeping ourselves a little informed of the world around us, or at least devoting the requisite amount of emotional energy to the disaster at hand. That's why Shafer's correspondant is right that the basic point is to impart emotion and not information. The information is of secondary importance and there's better sources for whoever is interested enough to seek it out.
I make no defence of the cable news (or network news for that matter) approach to politics which is more or less flat-out destructive to sensible discussion (I used to watch Capital Gang but it always raised my bloodpressure so much I'd be too pissed off afterwards to do any work). But when covering events breaking in real time, without time for too much "reflection" and "analysis", cable news has its purpose. Dana Milbank et al's article (linked above) does far more to make one uncomfortable -- actually, incredulously angry -- about what's going on in Louisiana and the powerplaying of the tragedy between the state Blue Dogs and the feds. But CNN's coverage spreads the discomfort thinner and further -- it's sort of an impressionistic mosaic of "something's not right here... something's not right with this disaster" -- and better that than nothing. Shafer doesn't like being manipulated, fair enough. But maybe that's not reason enough to risk breaking up the mosaic with, like, maps or... context.
When you don't ever watch cable news but just read savvy online political types complain about how awful it is, you develop low expectations. So I found myself actually surprised at how palatable CNN's Katrina coverage was -- how willing they were to challenge the authorities interviewed on their shows (they humiliated the hapless FEMA director asking him questions about the latest refugee reports he should have been able but couldn't answer); how (relatively) serious-minded and incredulous the anchors were; even the net's attempts at interactivity, asking the audience, for instance, to weigh in on the class ramifications of the rescue effort or having a civilian from inside the SuperDome give his (angry) views to Wolf Blizter for several minutes. I don't mean to suggest the coverage was good; but given the difficulty of running 24-hour news coverage, it wasn't awful either. Well, until Larry King Live at least.
Anyway, I read with interest Slate's Jack Shafer, giving a good overview of the problems with cable TV news. Everything he says is correct. But the problems seem to be more with the medium itself than with the execution (Geraldo Rivera aside, of course). Cable news shouldn't be anyone's sole source of information; at the very least it should compliment your local newspaper. But it's really there so that people can devote a little attention all day to whatever catastrophe is going on rather than a lot of attention for just a few minutes a day. It's sort of soothing that way, knowing we're always keeping ourselves a little informed of the world around us, or at least devoting the requisite amount of emotional energy to the disaster at hand. That's why Shafer's correspondant is right that the basic point is to impart emotion and not information. The information is of secondary importance and there's better sources for whoever is interested enough to seek it out.
I make no defence of the cable news (or network news for that matter) approach to politics which is more or less flat-out destructive to sensible discussion (I used to watch Capital Gang but it always raised my bloodpressure so much I'd be too pissed off afterwards to do any work). But when covering events breaking in real time, without time for too much "reflection" and "analysis", cable news has its purpose. Dana Milbank et al's article (linked above) does far more to make one uncomfortable -- actually, incredulously angry -- about what's going on in Louisiana and the powerplaying of the tragedy between the state Blue Dogs and the feds. But CNN's coverage spreads the discomfort thinner and further -- it's sort of an impressionistic mosaic of "something's not right here... something's not right with this disaster" -- and better that than nothing. Shafer doesn't like being manipulated, fair enough. But maybe that's not reason enough to risk breaking up the mosaic with, like, maps or... context.
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